The Coronation
by thebluebandit
Summary: Betty and Bonnibel try to survive the ruin. TW: Sad fluff and character death. Spin-off of my other fic, Sweet Steps.


**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**I strongly urge you to listen to "Smother" by Daughter since that song inspired me to write this fic and I also incorporated the lyrics into this because I love that dang song so much. It sets the tone for this so nicely. But welp, that calls for a disclaimer. I don't own the song and I take no credit for both the song and the show! Please review! I don't mind con-crit, either. ^^

_I'm wasted, losing time._**_  
_**  
Blood, dripping onto the snow. Her hand on her side trying to staunch the bleeding. The life draining out of her body reminded her of the tide pulling away from the shore, but this time it would not return. Her breathing was heavy and hoarse, her body recovering from the rush of adrenaline. She knew that soon her numbness would wear off and she would feel the pain.

"Mama, I'm sorry," a small hand wrapped around her wrist. It was pink, like hers.

_A foolish, fragile spine._

"Are you kidding?" She managed a smile wet with red. "You couldn't have known, Bon-Bon." She cupped her daughter's cheek. Tears streaked clean through the grime on her skin.  
"But, Mama, I—"  
"Shh. I'll be fine. I just need to rest for a bit. I'm okay."

_I want all that is not mine._

She didn't want this. Of course she wanted to be a mother someday, but not like this. _Not like this. _That was what he had said to him. She loved him, she loved him completely and she hoped he knew that before she had left. She still did. She had dreamt of bouncing babies on her lap and blowing raspberries into their bellies. She had dreamt of holding their hands up so their persistent waddling would turn into walking. She wanted to cry on their first day of kindergarten, and cry even harder when they would have to leave for college. She wanted it all. Once, she was naïve enough to think that she would grow old with her chestnut hair streaked with gray and her skin as wrinkled and soft as a bruised peach and that her children would care for her as she had cared for them. She wanted a _life, _and any simple one would be better than this.

_I want him but we're not right._

They were only playing that day. He had dusted it free of any debris and they should have known, _they should have known. _They should have known not to have even touched it. They should have noticed how pristine the crafted metal was, how it was too smooth to have been crafted by human hands and how the stone was so clear and perfectly faceted. But alas, they were drunk and wanted to celebrate his find. It was, after all, funded by the great Hunson Abadeer, the CEO and founder of one of the biggest corporations in the world, dubbed "The Demon" because of his cold and frugal nature. So they popped open some champagne, exchanged wet, drunken kisses that night and their laughter burbled into the dark to meet with the stars. Simon got onto one knee, and with a flourish, bowed with the crown in his fingers and said, "_My lady_," and put it atop his head.

They should have known. It started as a tingle on his skin, but they thought it was just the alcohol. Good champagne did that to people. Love did, too, and they had an ample supply of both that night.

_In the darkness I will meet my creators._

But she couldn't have that future with him, with _them. _When she was a little girl, her father told her of creatures that could not exist outside the realm of science. They had claws, looked like men, and if they did not walk the lands, had webbed feet and slick, slimy skin and hid in the black depths of desolate lagoons and at the bottom of swamps, waiting. To be recognized. For their existence to be validated and not just be lore. He wasn't a great father, always out, but sometimes he would give her souvenirs from his trips, little tchotchkes that he claimed were things the creatures had left so that people would want to find them. A trail of crumbs. A scale here and there or maybe a part of a dried fin. A tuft of fur or a claw. When she turned thirteen, she found out that they were all things from the tackle shop from down at the docks, but even then she believed in him.

Her mother, however, was warm. She would read her books and give her sweets to suck on when she had to go away for work, saying that life was already too bitter. For her birthday, instead of just one big cake, she got a dragon sculpted out of hot sugar with small cakes dolloped with cream and custard in flaky crusts surrounding it. Her mom had put a whole week's pay into that project, and Betty cried in her arms because without her father, they were so poor and they couldn't have this and that she should promise to never do anything like that again, but she calmed her down, cooing in a soothing voice, "Sweet girl, for you, I would do this a thousand times over."

_And they will all agree, that I'm a suffocator_

The veil felt like powdered sugar on her shoulders. When they both vowed to never leave each other alone, he lifted it and put his warm—_they were always warm, then_—lips to hers. In the seconds, before they made contact, her dress felt tight around her chest and a thought scratched weakly at the back of her mind. _Run. _But their lips sealed their fate, and one would compare it to that of an envelope, licked so that the world may know of the message inside, and one, if they were knowledgeable, would say it was nothing like an innocent love, but the unknowing exhuming of a crypt, its curse ready to infect the world once opened. Her finger had pricked the spindle, and she had bitten the apple. But she had loved him.

_I should go now quietly.  
_

It would be so easy to.

_For my bones have found a place  
_

It felt so, so comfortable.

_To lie down and sleep  
_

A simple flutter of the eyes, like a butterfly impaled by the needle, to never open again.

_Where all my layers can become reeds_

So easy. Death is the beautiful stripping of life's petals to reveal the core.

_All my limbs can become trees_

There were no more trees, but black skeletons that had once bore fruit. But that was ages ago.

_All my children can become me._

"Bon," she mustered, stroking her cheek with her knuckles. "You must become the queen." And her daughter, oh she was so beautiful, she didn't understand what that meant.  
"I'm sorry I led them here, Mama," she cried. "I thought they were the dragons, but they were the horsies. I'm sorry you got bit."  
"It's alright. I just need a nap, okay?"  
"NO! Not here. It's not the time to sleep. What if they find us?"  
She smoothed her thumb over a tear that had beaded in Bonnibel's eye. "Then you must run, my sweet."  
"But what about you?" She sniffed.  
She smiled. "I'll be with Gunter."  
"But Gunter's _gone!"_

She remembered him and how she had woken up to find him crawling on his belly across the frozen surface of the lake, reassuring himself that the ice was thick enough, it would hold, and she had tried to claw her way to him, but the ice…the lake had swallowed him whole. He was only eight years old and she felt the reason of his trek in her breast pocket, the wrinkled clump that had been her only photograph of Simon.

"You were always so smart."  
"But Mama," her fingers could not stop the flow. "I don't want you to die." She then pressed both of her little hands against the wound, but blood gushed through the spaces in her fingers and she screamed in frustration.  
_"Why won't it stop?"_

Betty had asked that question herself about the snow. _Why won't it stop? _He was still alive, she knew, and she had hoped she would never see the day it would stop.

_What a mess I leave._

She did not want to die.

_To follow_

"Put on the crown, Bonnibel."  
"Huh? Mama, I _can't. _It won't stop. I—"  
"Put it on."  
"Mama, you said not to."  
"I want to see you become a princess."  
"But, you're the princess."  
She chuckled weakly. She was so stubborn. "I've got to be the fairy now, the one who's always helping the princess."  
"Do you promise?"  
_"I do."  
_  
When she heard her rummaging through their packs, she pulled out a small strip wrapped in foil. It was her last piece. When Bonnibel came back at her side, the rim of the crown was in her hands.  
"Eat it," she offered her the stick of gum.  
"But what will that do?" She asked, perplexed.  
"It's good to have sweet things when you're afraid. Did you know that when I was a little girl, I wanted to run a candy shop? I wanted to sell lollipops, spin cotton candy, and make little cakes for the mothers who would peruse the store, but that dream was second to my biggest one."  
"What was that, Mama?" She took the piece.  
Betty smiled. "To become a mother."

_In the darkness, I will meet my creators._

"Mama?"

"Mama, I'm sorry I took their baby."

"M-Mama?"

"MAMA?"

"No..."

… _  
"You can't leave me."_

"This was supposed to be our kingdom."

_**"MAMA!"**_

"I…I put it on, Mama."

_They will all agree, I'm a suffocator._

The snow felt so soft, liked powdered sugar. A veil. And she imagined each flake to be Simon's fingers as he had traced her skin at the eve of dawn on the day after their wedding. Her skin had been the hue of the sky, and as the tips of his fingers brushed her back, she shivered, and he told her about the sailors that had starved to death searching for the horizon, and that he had found it in her.

_Suffocator_

She found it hard to breathe, but she felt her daughter's hand clutch hers.

_Oh no_

She heard them, in the dark. They were beautiful to look at, and from afar, they did look like dragons. The rainicorns. They had emerged at a facility in Korea. No one knew how, because those who did know had been devoured. The people thought they were heavenly beings descending from the sky to stop the snow and the war, but it was too late when they realized they had developed a ravenous taste for human flesh. It was too late.

They were coming, and they could not run.

_I'm sorry if I smothered you_

She wished, oh she wished, that that stick of gum would not be the last good thing her daughter would experience in this world.

_I sometimes wish I'd stay inside  
_

She wanted Simon to tell her it would be okay. How foolish she was, to still be in love with the man who had taken everything from her just because he had whispered those stories in her ears and called her a princess, a princess of the dusk and the dawn.

_My mother_

Bonnibel's lip quivered.

_Never to come out_

And she let go of her mother's hand.


End file.
